Issue 39 - United nations

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United nations

As promised in Issue 36, we asked some experts to cross the usual genre boundaries to see if any combinations worked, what might work and what was best left in its
component bottles. Gavin Smith reports

It's one of those ideas that just happens and which gives no clue as to where it might go. But why not mix Scotch with Irish, Japanese with American, and all four of them with whatever takes the fancy? So we put the idea to two highly respected whiskymen. Both loved the idea.

So Whyte and Mackay's master blender, Richard Paterson, and David Robertson, formerly Macallan master distiller and now one of the ‘gang of three' behind the innovative Jon, Mark and Robbo's Easy Drinking Whisky Company, made up five samples for evaluation.

And it wasn't just the big four that got included: American rye, corn, Canadian, Australian, Indian and even Bulgarian whiskies/eys also appeared in the mix from time to time.

Then we met together along with David Stewart, master blender at William Grant & Sons and with Billy Walker, whisky expert and distillery owner, to give them a whirl.

Here are the results.

For the purposes of this experiment, all whiskies/eys used were from bottled stock, rather than from the cask, and the average strength of the finished samples was between 40% and 45%.

Richard's sense of occasion and theatre led him to choose emotionally evocative names for his quintet, while David gave his whiskies/eys
titles which acted as flavo...